‘Where’s Monkeyboy?’ Sheba asked.
‘He not allowed out of cage,’ said Sister Moon, without opening her eyes.
‘Plumpscuttle doesn’t let him in the house,’ added Gigantus. ‘Ever since he did a poo in his best top hat.’
‘That was unpleasant for all concerned,’ said Mama Rat, shaking her head.
‘Is he back, then?’ asked Sheba. After last night’s show, he had gone out and she hadn’t heard him return, or the gargling snoring from his room.
‘He back soon,’ said Sister Moon. Her eyes still closed, she put a spoonful of sugar in her coffee, stirred it, then lifted the cup and took a sip.
‘He’ll be in a mood as black as hell, too,’ said Mama Rat. ‘Out all night, his money gone and sick as a pig. But he’ll probably go straight to bed and sleep until evening. We’ll just try keep out of his way.’
As Mama was speaking, Sheba caught a whiff through the open kitchen window. Stale sweat, crusty gravy and cheap wine. She marvelled at how her nose could still pick out a scent amongst the London stink.
‘He’s almost here,’ she said.
The others looked at her as if she were mad, but then the front door slammed open with enough force to shake plaster from the rafters. Heavy footsteps stomped across the parlour, and Plumpscuttle’s purple, blotchy face appeared at the kitchen door.
‘Get me some bleeding coffee!’ he roared to no one in particular.
Mama Rat filled and held out a mug. Plumpscuttle snatched it and drained the contents in one gulp, spilling half of it down his front. Then he glowered at the Peculiars.
‘I’m going to bed – don’t you lot dare make a sound.’
His booming footsteps headed upstairs, and his bedroom door slammed shut. A few moments later a sound like a wildebeest drowning came through the floorboards.
‘That’s him out for the day,’ said Gigantus, still writing away.
‘How you know he coming, Sheba?’ asked Sister Moon, a delicate eyebrow raised.
‘I smelt him,’ she said.
‘I must say, he is a bit on the ripe side,’ said Mama Rat, ‘but that is a very extraordinary nose you have, my dearie.’
Sheba rubbed her little pink nose with a hairy hand and felt slightly self-conscious. She wasn’t used to being paid compliments. Thankfully Sister Moon changed the subject.
‘We let Monkeyboy out of cage now?’
‘If we must . . .’
The Peculiars headed out into the yard. After stopping to check on Flossy – who was actually making an attempt to frolic – and trying to give Raggety some sugar without losing a hand, Sheba joined the others at the cage in the corner. Sister Moon yanked the door open and stood back.
There was a rustling from the straw within, then a boy-sized streak burst out and began bouncing around the yard, whooping and shrieking. He finally came to rest on top of the privy and gurned down at the others below him.
‘Good bloomin’ morning, you bunch of sideshow weirdos!’ he said, winking. ‘About time someone let me out of there; I’d run out of snot to harvest three hours ago!’
‘That is truly disgusting, even for you,’ said Mama Rat, which caused Monkeyboy to cackle so much he started retching. After a few moments, he calmed down enough to speak again.
‘Right, Sheba. Time for the National Anthem.’
The bells of Christ Church struck four in the afternoon. Monkeyboy was now amusing himself by throwing carefully rolled balls of dried pigeon poo at everyone. Mama Rat was leaning against one of the caravan’s large wooden wheels, behind an old copy of The Times. Gigantus was scribbling away once more, pausing every now and then to stare into space and chew his pen, and Sister Moon was throwing metal stars into a wooden pole. She was very good at it, and had just managed to split a fly clean in half.
Sheba sat on an old milking stool, feeling bored. This was hardly the exciting big-city life she had been expecting. Perhaps the days of sitting at the end of Little Pilchton pier hadn’t been that dull after all.
‘Can I read some of your paper, please, Mama Rat?’ she asked. At least now she didn’t have to squirrel bits of paper away in Flossy’s pen. She smiled when the woman handed her the front page.
The headlines were all about the Great Exhibition. There was a report about a group of seven hundred farmers that had travelled up from the country, a review of the latest exhibits from America and an article moaning about how awful the food was. There were etchings of the most amazing exhibits: the Koh-i-Noor diamond (‘the largest in the world!’), the pink crystal fountain (‘twenty-seven feet high!’) and Mr Faraday’s revolutionary electromagnetic engine (‘like captured lightning!’). It seemed as if the exhibition was the only thing the city was talking about, and yet none of the Peculiars had even mentioned it.
‘Have any of you been to see the Great Exhibition in the palace of crystal?’
‘It’s the Crystal Palace, dearie,’ said Mama Rat. ‘And no, we have not as yet had the pleasure.’
‘If I even had a spare shilling, I could think of a hundred other things I’d spend it on, rather than go see a load of old tosh in a giant greenhouse,’ said Monkeyboy. ‘And anyway, they wouldn’t let in the likes of us.’
‘I don’t suppose we’ll bother,’ said Mama Rat. ‘It all sounds very grand, but once you’ve seen Rome by moonlight, nothing really compares.’
‘Well, I’d like to see it,’ Sheba said, under her breath.
‘Me too,’ said Sister Moon. ‘We go together sometime.’
Sheba blushed – she’d thought her comment was too quiet to be heard – and then smiled nervously at Sister Moon. This must be what having a friend is like, she thought. A proper one, with a single head and no fleece.
She was imaging herself and Moon, strolling through the glass corridors amongst the glorious exhibits, when there was a knock on the yard door.
The Peculiars stared at each other in surprise for a few seconds. Then the more shocking rushed to hide, so as not to frighten off their visitors. Gigantus lumbered into the house, Sheba slid under the old caravan and Monkeyboy crept back to his covered cage.
Sister Moon stood like a palace guard next to Mama Rat, who arranged herself on a bench and called out, ‘Please enter!’
The gate swung open slowly and, with much shuffling of feet and backward glances, two figures entered the yard. A woman and a man. From her hiding place, Sheba could see they were barely human – the poorest of the poor. They were wearing little more than rags and were caked to the waist in stinking mud. Their backs were bent, and their shaking limbs were stick-thin. Sheba could see that, underneath a tattered shawl and what might once have been a hat, their eyes were saucer-wide. The mud-stench and pallid skin reminded her of Till, the girl at the show last night.
‘Good day,’ said Mama Rat, beaming at them from her seat. ‘Excuse the messy yard, but it’s not often we have company. How can we be helping you?’
There was a flurry of nudging and shoving, until finally the man was pushed forward a step. He removed his hat-like thing and stared studiously at the ground in front of Mama Rat’s feet. When he spoke, Sheba was startled to hear a young man’s voice. She had been expecting him to be ancient. What a harsh life these people must lead to age them so, she thought.
‘If you please, your ladyship,’ he said. ‘We has come to see you, as no other we’ve asked has the hinclination to give us the time of day. We ’as been all over Sarf London asking for ’elp, and ’as been spat on as often as not. We ’ad all but given up ’ope, until the missus fought of asking yourselves.’
‘Help, dearie?’ said Mama Rat. ‘I think you’ve got us mistaken. We’re just a small sideshow troupe. Unless you want to book us for a performance, we won’t be much use to you.’
Sheba could see the pity in her eyes. It mirrored what she herself was feeling. That’s just the way people look at me, she realised, with a sudden chill. That patronising arch of the eyebrows, the glance that says, ‘Poor thing – how misera
ble it must be to be her.’ She felt the skin beneath her furry cheeks prickle and blush at having done exactly the thing she most hated to someone else.
‘We know that, your ladyness. It’s just that we’ve asked everyone what is supposed to ’elp us – the peelers, the men on the river – and they all just laughed in our face. On account of what we ’eard, we fought this might be the place to come.’
The woman plucked up courage and stepped forward to speak. She too sounded much younger than she looked.
‘It’s our little girl, ma’am. She came ’ere last night; told us all about you lot and how fantastic and magical you all were and stuff. Then she went out to gather from the river this morning and never come back. All we found is her picking sack, left on the mud . . . my poor Till . . .’ The woman broke down in tears.
From her hiding place beneath the caravan, Sheba gasped. Till!
‘Missing, you say?’ said Mama Rat. ‘And you’re sure she hasn’t just run away?’
‘Run away to what?’ asked the man, then looked shocked at his sudden outburst. ‘Begging your pardon, your ladyshipness, but you can see from the sight of us that we ’as no better station to run to than the one we got. Picking from the mud is all we is good for. Ain’t nowhere for us to run, nor no one what would have us.’
‘Hmm, you have a point, dearie,’ Mama Rat said. ‘Do you have any idea as to what might have happened? Has she failed to come home before?’
‘No, your nobleness. Besides skipping off to see you lot last night, she’s always done as she was told. Tess thought she might ’ave come back to join you, but I said, “What’s so fantastical about a raggedy little mudlark?” Grand folk like you wouldn’t want someone like ’er hanging around . . .’
Mama Rat sat and puffed on her pipe for a few moments while the mudlark woman sniffled and the man shuffled his feet.
Sheba reached forwards and clutched the wheel spokes, staring wide-eyed from the shadows. We have to help find her, we just have to! She could almost picture Till – lost and lonely somewhere, away from her parents. It was hard enough for Sheba, forever wondering about the family she had never had. Imagine having known that kind of love and having it ripped away from you. Say we’ll help her! She tried to will the thought across the yard and into Mama Rat’s head. If she didn’t think it would send Till’s ma and da screaming out of the yard, she would have jumped out and begged.
In between the clouds of pipe smoke, Mama Rat caught her eye. Some kind of understanding passed between them.
‘I think we might be able to help you, dearies,’ she said, slowly.
‘You will?’ The man looked directly at Mama Rat for the first time, his mouth open in shock. ‘You really will?’
‘I’m not promising anything,’ said Mama Rat. ‘As I said, we’re just a little sideshow troupe. But we do have some connections and . . . abilities that might be of service, I suppose. And after all, your daughter was a member of our audience, however briefly.’
‘Lawd bless ya,’ said the man, clapping his hands. From under her spatterings of dirt and grime, the woman beamed with relief. ‘And we’ll pay you all back some’ow. Even if it takes us fifty years of sifting mud, we will.’
At that moment a large amount of banging and shouting could be heard coming from the upstairs window of the house. Plumpscuttle was stirring.
‘Yes, yes, we’ll discuss all that later,’ said Mama Rat, hurriedly. Sister Moon stepped forward and began ushering the mudpickers towards the gate. ‘We’ll send word when we have any information for you. Keep your ears open, and please feel free to visit again, should you discover anything yourselves. Good afternoon, dearies!’
‘’Ang on a minute—’ the man began to say, but Sister Moon’s firm grip had propelled the pair into the street, slamming the gate behind them.
Moments later, the back door of the house banged open and the bleary and dishevelled form of Plumpscuttle appeared.
‘Did I just see some people in my yard?’ he bellowed. ‘Some strange folk, uninvited on my personal property? Some scrawny street-offal covered in rags and filthy muck?’
‘We were just asking them if they knew anyone selling good food,’ said Sheba, as she climbed out from under the caravan. ‘We were all feeling a little peckish.’
‘Peckish? I could eat that scrawny two-headed sheep raw! Get me five helpings of whatever you’re having. And make it quick.’ He threw a handful of copper pennies out into the yard, then stomped off into the house.
Mama Rat gave Sheba a thoughtful look as Sister Moon scooped up the pennies and headed off to find a street vendor.
‘You, young lady, are beginning to prove immensely useful,’ she said.
Dinner was a bowl of Penny Dip: fried sheep heart and liver, mixed with onions and dumplings. To Sheba it tasted exotic and delicious, even if the dumplings were slightly gritty. The others shovelled it in their mouths without expression. This was standard fare, as uninspiring for them as fish soup had been for Sheba at Grunchgirdle’s.
They ate outside, sitting cross-legged on the yard floor, as Plumpscuttle was occupying the kitchen table. Every now and then the sound of a wet burp echoed through the window.
‘So,’ said Gigantus. ‘What do you make of them mudgrubblers?’
‘A bunch of low-life scroungers, if you ask me,’ said Monkeyboy. ‘Surely we’re not going to bother looking for their brat? Probably got munched up by those man-eating monster eels in the river.’
‘I recall your start to life wasn’t that much higher, half-pint,’ said Gigantus, as he licked the last bit of gravy from his spoon.
‘That’s got nothing to do with it!’ Monkeyboy shouted, spraying everyone with a mouthful of half-chewed sheep guts. ‘All I’m saying is, what’s the point of helping out a load of stinky old mudheads? Don’t you know how many people there are in this blooming city? Anyway, it’ll only be a few months before they all starve to death whatever we do. If the cholera doesn’t get them first.’
‘That little girl,’ said Sheba, ‘happens to be my friend. Her name is Till, and she was very sweet and kind to me. Unlike most people. If there’s a way to help her, then I will.’
‘Well said, dearie.’ Mama Rat gave her a wink. ‘Those better off should always try and help the less fortunate. That’s why I agreed on behalf of you all. And my little babbies will come in useful, looking for that girl.’
‘In what way?’ Sheba couldn’t think how a miniature circus would be any help in finding a missing mudlark.
‘Oh, my boys are very good at detecting things. They can go from one end of this city to the other without anyone so much as catching a whiff of them. They’ve found all sorts of bits and pieces for me over the years. All sorts indeed.’
Sheba wanted to ask more, but a deep voice boomed out from the kitchen.
‘When you disgusting bunch of aberrations have finished stuffing your fat faces, there’s work to be done! Get off your lazy arses, and get this place ready for a show!’
Chapter Six
IN WHICH THE PECULIARS TRY SNIFFING BY THE RIVER (FOR CLUES, THAT IS).
Early morning on Bermondsey waterfront, and the tanneries were already pumping streams of thick red fluid into the Thames. A mixture of chemicals, acid and waste, it let out fumes that could take your eyebrows off at fifty paces. At the tannery doors, a steady stream of pure-pickers had begun to gather. The leather works needed excrement for tanning the hides and each carried a bucket of fresh dog droppings that they had collected from the streets the day before. Boats had begun to row, sail and steam up the river. And waiting for the tide to ebb were packs of tattered children. Mudlarks, just like Till.
Sheba tugged her hood over her head, hiding her face in its shadows. Her delicate nose was completely swamped by the disgusting aromas. It stank, it was freezing, and she was bored beyond measure. They had been out here since dawn, although it seemed like months of her life had passed by, standing on these muck-spattered cobbles.
When they had
first made their way through the morning crowd, she had marvelled at the huge amount of people. More than the audiences at Plumpscuttle’s shows. More than the people milling outside her window on Brick Lane. She had kept close to Gigantus, one little furry hand clutching the back of his jumper, as he steamed through the throngs like an icebreaker. Then it had seemed marvellous and exhilarating to be out and about in the big city at last, but the novelty had soon worn off.
They had been asking questions of folk on the waterfront for hours. Or rather, Gigantus had been asking questions while the others lurked in the background. Their peculiarities didn’t exactly encourage people to speak to them. They were usually too busy staring to even hear the question.
Gigantus, on the other hand, used his huge size to great effect. When he stepped in front of someone it was like being confronted by a small mountain. People stood trembling while he asked about the missing mudlark, then told him every scrap of information they thought could be of any possible value, and very often more besides. He was currently towering over a shivering bargeman who was babbling about some spoons that were hidden under his bedroom floorboards.
Sheba felt useless. She had thought she might be able to sniff something out with her nose, a hint of Till’s scent perhaps, but all she could smell were the tanneries and the stinking river. She had also imagined that a missing girl would be big news amongst the people of the riverside. It was becoming obvious that none of them gave a monkey’s.
Beneath all the boats and steamers, beneath the oozing brown water and the floating lumps of stuff that swirled in it, was the mud that Till had spent her life combing for dubious treasure. In her cape pocket, Sheba ran her fingers over the cracked green marble. Is she down there now? she wondered. Did she get sucked under the cold, clammy mud? Or did someone take her from the river to a different place entirely?
They were upsetting thoughts, but Sheba couldn’t help them. Monkeyboy was right: in a city teeming with so many people, what were the chances of finding one insignificant little girl?
The Peculiars Page 4